ABSTRACT
Legal pluralism is a complex and multifaceted concept that raises important issues when considering the notion of establishment. There is a huge scholarly literature from many different fields focused on legal pluralism, but little attention has been paid to how the concept might relate to the historically important idea of establishment. Sally Merry's much-cited article says that legal pluralism is a central theme in the reconceptualization of the law/society relation. Accepting legal pluralism as a social fact, then, Brian Tamanaha describes the legal pluralism extant in the Middle Ages in Western Europe, reminding us that the social conditions often defined as illustrating legal pluralism did not begin exclusively with the colonial period. Some discussions exist of the relationship of legal pluralism to concepts such as religious freedom or human rights. Turner's concerns about the implications of legal pluralism for development of a shared idea of what it means to be a citizen of a given society needs to be considered.
